8  Zooarchaeology

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8.1 Case studies

The following map shows the sites under investigation, divided by chronology. Please select the desired chronology (or chronologies) from the legend on the right.

Legend: R = Roman, LR = Late Roman, EMA = Early Middle Ages, Ma = 11th c. onwards

8.2 Medians

The faunal dataset is large (434+ records) and diversified. Looking at the distributions of each animal, the curve is not gaussian. The best choice for non-normal curves is to use medians instead of means to come up with figures that are less dependent on outliers. The function Medians_Chrono_Zoo() (Section 3.1) can be used to return as output weighted medians for each chronology. The in-depth description of how weights are calculated for each sample can be found in Section 6.4.1. To summarise, sites with a very large (i.e. fuzzy) chronology contribute less to the calculation of the median. Table 8.1 provides the median values of the main categories of faunal remains for each chronology, and Table 8.2 the median values for each century. Stronger colours in the cells indicate higher values.

Show the code 
Medians_Categorised_per_Chronology_ZOO <- 
  data.frame(
    Medians_Chrono_Zoo(zooarch_cond, "R")*100,
    Medians_Chrono_Zoo(zooarch_cond, "LR")*100,
    Medians_Chrono_Zoo(zooarch_cond, "EMA")*100,
    Medians_Chrono_Zoo(zooarch_cond, "Ma")*100
  )

# Round to 2 digits
Medians_Categorised_per_Chronology_ZOO <- round(Medians_Categorised_per_Chronology_ZOO, 2)

## Weighted medians per century ##
Medians_ZOO_Centuries <- data.frame(
  "I BCE" = zooarch_tables(zooarch_cond, -1)$Medians,  
  "I CE" = zooarch_tables(zooarch_cond, 1)$Medians,
  "II CE" = zooarch_tables(zooarch_cond, 2)$Medians,
  "III CE" = zooarch_tables(zooarch_cond, 3)$Medians,
  "IV CE" = zooarch_tables(zooarch_cond, 4)$Medians,
  "V CE" = zooarch_tables(zooarch_cond, 5)$Medians,
  "VI CE" = zooarch_tables(zooarch_cond, 6)$Medians,
  "VII CE" = zooarch_tables(zooarch_cond, 7)$Medians,
  "VIII CE" = zooarch_tables(zooarch_cond, 8)$Medians,
  "IX CE" = zooarch_tables(zooarch_cond, 9)$Medians,
  "X CE" = zooarch_tables(zooarch_cond, 10)$Medians,
  "XI CE" = zooarch_tables(zooarch_cond, 11)$Medians
)

# Assigning the colnames (optional - instead of roman numerals)
colnames(Medians_ZOO_Centuries) <- c("1st c. BCE", "1st c. CE", "2nd c.", "3rd c.", "4th c.", "5th c.", "6th c.", "7th c.", "8th c.", "9th c.", "10th c.", "11th c.")

# Rounding the medians
Medians_ZOO_Centuries <- round(Medians_ZOO_Centuries, digits=2)

# Removing categories that are not necessary
Medians_ZOO_Centuries <- Medians_ZOO_Centuries[-c(6:9),]
Table 8.1: Weighted medians of zooarchaeological remains, divided by chronology.
Chronologies
R LR EMA Ma
Pigs 48.0 38.62 35.00 35.62
Cattle 10.1 8.36 18.00 19.00
Caprine 25.0 22.08 29.00 27.00
Dom..Fowl 4.0 6.00 5.00 5.00
Edible.W..Mammals 5.0 3.00 3.00 3.00
Fish 1.0 2.00 3.93 1.00
Mollusca 11.0 8.00 4.00 2.89
Unedible.Dom..Mammals 2.0 3.00 3.95 2.00
Unedible.Wild.Mammals 1.0 1.00 1.00 1.00

Pigs’ medians from the Italian peninsula are the highest in each chronology, although their values decrease after the Roman age peak. Cattle medians slightly decrease after the Roman age, even though surprisingly (put a reference here to literature review to explain why surprisingly) the values increase again (18–19.71%) during the early Medieval and Medieval age. The trends for sheeps and goats are also interesting. During the Roman age the Italian median is 25%, slightly decreasing in the 3rd to the 5th century, and increasing again after. When discussing sheep-farming, one must always consider the geographical features from which the data is being collected. This will be discussed later on in the chapter, where more regional and geographical trends will be provided. Domestic fowl (chickens and geese) has quite stable values of 4-5%, with a peak of 7.68% in the 11th century. Wild game peaks during the Roman age, with a median value of 5%, reaching a minimum in the early Middle ages (2%) and rising again in the 11th century. Two considerations must be made for game consumption. The first is that as we will see later on, game consumption is strongly related to the site typology. Secondly, the Roman age value is pulled up by assemblages from the 1st century BCE. After that, the values strongly decrease and by looking at the individual centuries the medians from the 7th century onwards are much higher (ranging from 1.42% to 2.09%).

Table 8.2: Weighted medians of zooarchaeological remains, divided by century.
Faunal remains
Pigs Cattle Caprine Domestic fowl Wild game
1st c. BCE 39.70 11.41 26.07 0.00 0.76
1st c. CE 40.89 11.31 25.48 0.00 0.58
2nd c. 48.20 10.28 22.33 0.79 0.00
3rd c. 41.57 8.24 19.22 1.53 0.73
4th c. 34.15 9.56 23.23 1.79 0.98
5th c. 34.01 13.38 24.69 2.33 0.88
6th c. 31.83 20.66 28.55 2.75 0.65
7th c. 30.42 18.52 30.14 4.51 1.58
8th c. 33.63 13.89 30.13 2.70 1.18
9th c. 37.54 11.76 23.32 1.16 1.54
10th c. 35.77 14.36 25.64 1.63 1.93
11th c. 34.08 19.34 27.44 1.91 2.09
* The color gradients in this table are used to indicate the chronologies.

8.2.1 Medians of faunal remains by context type

The weighted medians included below have been generated using the package dplyr and the summarize() function, applied to the exported relative proportion table (using the custom function zooarch_tables_general(), described in Section 3.2). The medians have been calculated for four animal categories (pigs, cattle, caprine, and game) for each site type and chronology. After, similar context types have been merged to simplify the reading; for example, the category Castle has been merged with the category Castrum, as they both indicate élite/military fortified contexts.

(a) Pigs

(b) Cattle

(c) Caprine

(d) Game

Figure 8.1: Medians (%) of edible animal remains, divided by site type and chronology.

8.2.2 Medians of faunal remains by macro region

The process for generating weighted medians for the three Italian macro regions (Southern, Central and Northern Italy) has followed the same logic used in the previous section. The medians have been calculated for four animal categories (pigs, cattle, caprine, and game) for each macro area and chronology.

(a) Pigs

(b) Cattle

(c) Caprine

(d) Game

Figure 8.2: Medians (%) of edible animal remains, plotted by macroregion and chronology.

8.2.3 Medians of faunal remains by geography type

Weighted medians have been generated for the four geographies considered (plain, hill, hilltop, coast, and mountain), after the categories Hill and Hilltop have been merged. The medians have been calculated for four animal categories (pigs, cattle, caprine, and game) for each geography and chronology.

(a) Pigs

(b) Cattle

(c) Caprine

(d) Game

Figure 8.3: Medians (%) of edible animal remains, plotted by geography and chronology.

9 Context type

9.1 Pigs

Question: Is the animal X - let’s say Pigs - more strongly associated to a particular settlement type during a certain chronology?

Expectation 1: Pigs % should be higher in urban and fortified settlements, as they are animals which are only used for meat and can sustain large populations or the military.

Expectation 2: Possibly pigs would increase in villas in the Late Roman age, as their production shifts to a more extensive agriculture (Source: Historical literature).

Expectation 3: If urban density decreases during the late Roman and early Medieval phase, but increases in the Medieval age, do the pigs % follow similar trends?

9.2 Cattle

Warning: The `size` argument of `element_line()` is deprecated as of ggplot2 3.4.0.
ℹ Please use the `linewidth` argument instead.

9.3 Caprine

9.4 Edible W. Mammals

Model under construction

10 Macroregion

10.1 Pigs

10.2 Cattle

10.3 Caprine

10.4 Edible W. Mammals

Model under construction

11 Geography

11.1 Pigs

11.2 Cattle

11.3 Caprine

11.4 Edible W. Mammals

Model under construction

12 Modelling caprine against altitude